gilbertoAVFC

Don't really agree the team should have to "earn it" and it isn't anything close to cheerleading lol. Sure, there's something to be said that English atmospheres being more reactive creates more intensity when they are actually loud, I agree, but you're just making excuses for the fact that European atmospheres are generally clearly better than England. Atmosphere was very good at times but the team needed us when it was flat and it gave Bayern momentum. They had already earned it by being there in the first place

I doubt Ollie will decline any time in the next three years at least. He is a much better player than Duran and far more important to us imo.

Thought this after the game. Realistically he is probably our second best outfield player and third overall, which is still a remarkable achievement.

Defensively immense. You say to a player that you get the defensive fundamentals correct, the confidence will come. Exactly what happened. Bailey will understand (hopefully).

Slight sidenote but any idea if Bartons Arms will be open after full-time and if so til when?

Why on earth did we not loan in a Lenglet-ish centre-back this season? McGinn a massive miss for this. I still think if we can cook up a storm atmosphere-wise these can be got at, but we will need to be perfect defensively which seems highly unlikely currently. I'm afraid the only option here is to give Diego Carlos a bollocking and hope for the best. Just too risky to play a kid in defence imo.

No chance Mings starts over Pau in our current situation. Mings would start as RCB if anything, which is fine.

Am I imagining this or was it someone else? I was in a busy pub and only caught a replay. For that VAR check in stoppage time, did he try and reach out and nearly handballed it even though it was nowhere near him? I think the Delap goal is bad but that later incident had me thinking he was almost trying to handball it?? I could be wrong, but that was a lot more unforgivable if it was the case. I'm not usually one to dig out players but he looks like he's genuinely packed it in. Pre-season was also the same.

The petty part of me is still quite resentful of his attitude during his first stint, and I think he has a lot to prove. Hopefully he applies himself as Youri did when he was out of the team.

He's a kid. We won against a Champ/League 1 level side and conceded only in the last moments. Why knock him? He should be proud to have gotten the trust of Emery at such an early stage of his career, not slandered by those who don't understand youth development but call themselves fans.

You may well be right, although I think he is self-aware enough to know this. Without sounding too stereotypical, he is the type of person who will again find another gear I think this season and use that question mark as fuel. He has already greatly improved under Emery.

I think I just disagree on his position. He's played as a our widest midfielder on the right a lot and I actually think it's his best position (albeit a little more licence to drift than in the last couple of games perhaps). According to Transfermarkt he had played "RM" 21 times under Emery before this season.

He's been playing there for like a season. Think he's been pretty great there overall, albeit a little less effective in recent games. Last year had some of his best games for the club in that spot. People been saying he's not done much playing in the middle too, yet he's been consistently good under Emery...

His touch was poor but thought he dealt with 1v1s ok, particularly in the second-half. But this was really bad. No excuses to be honest. N'Diaye was nowhere near him when he played DCL onside either. Had ages to react.

May make sense to rest Ollie for this given his post-match comments and Duran's form.